The present disclosure relates to various polydentate polycyclic compounds whose luminescent properties change when combined with an analyte. These compounds may be useful in light-emitting applications, metal ion detection or recognition, metal ion extraction, catalysis, development of shape-persistent macrocycles, and/or assembly of metal organic frameworks.
Luminescence is the emission of light by a substance/material that does not result from heat. Examples of luminescence include fluorescence and phosphorescence. Fluorescence occurs when a substance/material absorbs ultraviolet (UV) light, and then emits light, typically of a lower wavelength. This phenomenon can be useful in many applications. For example, in biochemistry, an antibody can be labeled with a fluorophore. The antibody will attach to its target antigen, and the fluorescence of the fluorophore can be detected to identify the location of the target antigen. Labelling multiple antibodies with different fluorophores allows visualization of multiple target antigens. For example, one fluorophore can emit a red color, a second fluorophore can emit a blue color, and a third fluorophore can emit a green color. In fluorescence, the re-emission of light occurs relatively quickly (nanoseconds), whereas in phosphorescence the re-emission of light occurs relatively slowly (milliseconds to hours).
Generally, a structurally different compound is needed for each different color. As a result, an entire set of structurally different compounds are needed in order to obtain different luminescent outputs. It would be desirable to be able to reduce the number of compounds needed to generate the same number of different luminescent outputs.